The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) today announced four recipients of the AME 2017 Excellence Award. The AME Excellence Award primarily recognizes North American manufacturing plants that have demonstrated excellence in manufacturing and business. The award acknowledges continuous improvement, best practices, creativity and innovation. Recognized among those four recipients is Powerblanket, the smallest company ever to receive this award.

Powerblanket – Salt Lake City, Utah

The leader in total temperature control, Powerblanket designs and manufactures high technology smart controls and monitoring devices, heating blankets, and chilling products that solve a wide range of temperature problems in industries such as oil and gas, construction, industrial, mining, and railroad. The AME assessment team highlighted Powerblanket’s great culture throughout the company. The team also commended Powerblanket’s improvements and impressive turnaround, especially for only being three years into its lean journey. The award presentation will take place on Oct. 25, 2017.

How It All Started

Powerblanket is a great example of problem solving and innovation in industry. A concrete worker in Salt Lake City, UT wanted to work more efficiently year-round. He worked with an engineering professor at the University of Utah to create an efficient heating technology that would cure concrete quickly and with maximum strength. They developed an innovative concrete heating product and founded Powerblanket, which soon became a leading manufacturer in the concrete industry. This technology proved to solve many temperature problems for applications across many different industries, and they began wrapping barrels, buckets, pipes, and tanks. From there they developed an expertise in temperature control, built a world-class custom design team, created control devices, and entered the industrial cooling industry with a new line of chillers and cooling blankets.

What started as a solution to a common constructi

on problem, has turned into an industry-leading company that engineers and manufactures temperature control solutions for many different industries all over the world.

More About the AME Award

The AME Excellence Award has a rigorous selection process that begins when a company submits an extensive achievement report based on the AME Excellence Award evaluation criteria. Achievement reports are evaluated by the AME award assessment team. For companies that score high enough in this achievement report review, an intensive site visit is completed, during which a volunteer team of manufacturing practitioners validates the submitted achievement report. Recipients of the Excellence Award are selected based on the combined results of the achievement report review and site visit feedback.

The AME Excellence Award is not something that can be achieved by one person or one company leader. It takes all team members working together to achieve the level of enterprise excellence that the AME Excellence Award recognizes. With that in mind, AME representatives will visit award recipients’ facilities to present awards in person so that everyone working in these facilities can participate in the celebration.

Recipients will also be honored at the AME 2017 International Conference, taking place Oct. 9-13 in Boston, Mass. Recipients will share their best practices with other lean and continuous improvement practitioners in attendance.

April 2018 Power Manufacturer: Fezzari Bicycles Fezzari saw that buying a good bike at a good value was an ordeal. Chris Washburn, Fezzari founder, repeatedly saw that people were improperly fit for their bike, or simply riding a bike that was the wrong size altogether for years without even knowing it. The industry was in […]

March 2018 Power Manufacturer: Rock West Composites From taffy to custom barn doors, we now move on to the world of composites. Manufacturing is a broad and diverse industry, and through the Power Manufacturing Award, we hope to represent the many different industries that demonstrate manufacturing excellence. Rock West Composites Rock West Composites, our Power […]